Saturday, 17 October 2015

Is This the Way to Church Growth?

Recently in an article for the Guardian newspaper Giles
Fraser suggested the Church of England should do to its churches what Beeching
did to the railways, close its underused rural parishes. He further proposed
concentrating resources in churches in “minster” type churches for the purpose
of re-evangelisation [1].

Rural churches he claimed needed to close as half of them
had less then 20 in the congregation, a quarter under 10. The overstretched ministers
released from these churches could be placed in the minster congregations of “a
community of clergy –some pastors, some evangelists, some theologians”, the
team to lead the re growth of the church, making congregations “worth
travelling to”, to quote Fraser’s words.

My first reaction was to cringe that the answer to the
church’s decline was seen to be yet more theologians and clergy, the two types
of ministry not mentioned in the New Testament [2]! However these are serious
proposals by Giles Fraser and deserve consideration.

The effectiveness of any strategy for re-growing the church
depends on whether it can tackle the root cause of church decline, the church’s failure to recruit sufficient
people to counteract its losses [3]. From my modelling I would express the
hypothesis this way:

Church
decline is caused by the inadequate production of enthusiasts, the spiritually “infectious”
Christians who make new converts and thus generate more enthusiasts.

This process creates a reinforcing feedback loop and is the
engine that drives revival growth, the growth that took the church to its peak
at the beginning of the twentieth century [4,5,6]. This way Christianity grows
in a similar pattern to a disease.

Figure 1: Generation of Enthusiasts - the Engine of
Revival Church Growth

So to the two proposals, concentrating on issues of growth
and decline, not the pastoral implications.

1. Closing Rural Churches

a.Closing rural churches might cut parts of the
country off from Christian witness altogether. This reduces the potential pool
of converts and would slow church growth, perhaps put the church further under
the extinction threshold [4]. It would have to be demonstrated that these rural
churches have virtually no conversion/witness and thus nothing was being lost
by their closure.

b.Although 50% of rural churches are under 20 that
does not mean they are small. This number could be a significant fraction of
their community, more so than many inner city churches. Small communities have
small churches, and small communities are not going away. They need Jesus and
closing a church denies them access to salvation, as well as further reducing
denominational recruitment.

c.It is not just the size of the church that is
important but its spiritual life. A church of 20 people on fire for God will be
more likely to see growth and conversion than a large church full of
ineffective and spiritually dead people. It is LIFE that matters. A small
number of enthusiasts can lead to large future growth of the church [4]. It was
Dr DM Lloyd-Jones who said that putting six graveyards together does not bring
the dead to life, just gives a bigger graveyard [7]! Merging and combining
small churches does not in and of itself bring spiritual life. Neither do communities
of clergy.

d.If the issue is the resourcing of a professional
minister then do without one. Train the people in the church to act as its
elders and teachers. Perhaps the Church of England needs to return to a
Biblical every member ministry pattern for rural churches. Learn from the
Brethren!

e.If the issue is the maintenance of the building
then manage without the building. But the building is not the church, and
closing the building does not mean closing the church. Buildings that outlive
their usefulness need to be let go so people are not burdened with their
maintenance. This could mean mothballing them for a future that may need them
again. It would not be the first period in history that church buildings went
into serious disrepair, only the be renewed generations later. If sold for
redevelopment that strategy would be lost.

f.It is unclear that selling ancient buildings for
demolition and development would ever be allowed to happen. The delays involved
would mean the resources would not be available for years, perhaps too late. It
is unclear that people would even want to develop in such spots. There are many
redundant and under used parish buildings in cities. The buildings are less ancient;
their sale would be easier and probably fetch a better price.

g.If the purpose of closing rural churches is to
generate capital, then it is unclear that having more money would improve
mission. More paid clergy in towns and cities may well stifle work to empower
all Christians [2]. Ironically declining churches can be wealthier than growing
ones as they contain both older and more committed people [8]. Shortage of
money is not the issue. The issue with church decline is primarily spiritual,
not financial. This kind does not
come out by money but by prayer and
fasting, Mark 9:29!

h.I can understand how a large church at a
distance from rural areas can be used to replant Christianity in areas with no
church. But at some point someone needs to travel to the rural area and the
same issue of small numbers using a large amount of resource will resurface,
with the added burden of having a fresh start. Better not to lose them in the
first place.

Thus the proposal to close many rural churches has issues. However
if the strategy were one of keeping spiritually lively fellowships of
believers in rural areas, but freeing them from reliance on paid clergy
and the need to maintain a building, which could be closed if unfit for use,
then the idea may have merit [9]. It would then be worth trying as in the next 10
years many of these churches will close naturally, so the risk factor in
closing them early is not that high.

2. Concentration of Resources in “Minster” Churches

a.Care would be needed to ensure that the
buildings in which the “resource concentrated” church meets are big enough.Whereas a church building that is too
big may be a waste of resource, a building that is full each Sunday seriously
hinders growth by lack of capacity. This is why churches in the past always
built buildings with far more capacity than needed at the time.

b.Positively, the concentration of enthusiasts,
and of believers, in one place is a driver of church growth [5]. Figure 2 shows
the engine of growth, loop R, enhanced with other processes. Firstly the
renewal loop, R1. The more enthusiasts the more engagement with
non-enthusiastic members renewing them to infectiousness, whether they had it
before or not. Also the spiritual life loops.The more enthusiasts interact, pray, worship, do Bible
training, the more effective they become. They now have a spiritual disease
that is more infectious, leading to
more effective renewal, R2, and more effective conversion, R3. It can be shown
that a critical mass of enthusiasts and church size can trigger this enhanced
revival process [5].

c.Churches with concentrated resources are also
called Flagship Churches, ones that reproduce themselves in other churches [10];
and Infectious Centres of Spiritual Health [11], places where Christians are
set on fire again for God. These are not “minster” churches as such as the
concentration is of every member ministries, not paid clergy. They can be seen
in many denominations and not surprisingly are in areas of large population.
Although they can have a big influence in their own city, e.g. Holy Trinity
Brompton in London, it is not clear they have been able to help rural areas. In
principle it could work, but some research would be needed.

Giles Fraser’s proposal to concentrate resources is a good
idea, has been effective in the past, and is still effective in the growth of
churches in London and many of the newer charismatic congregations.

But it comes with a proviso. It is not just about creating churches that are worth coming to,
though that definitely helps. It is about creating people that are worth living like. Ones whose lives are worth copying.
People who have a passion for God, in the person of Jesus, through the work of
the Holy Spirit. People who are willing to take sacrifices to ensure the lost
are saved, out of sheer compassion for eternal souls. People who live in the
light of eternity, not the need of the moment. People who are determined not to
follow the self-centred and hedonistic spirit of this and any other age, but
see a world transformed where people can live as God intended them to live.

It is not about church, but about people.

It is not about saving an institution, but saving souls.

Notes and References

[1] We must do to our churches what Beeching did to
the railways. Giles Fraser,
The Guardian, 15/10/15.

[2] I am OK
with pastors and evangelists, but what happened to apostles, prophets and
teachers; overseas and deacons?

As all organisations grow there is a tendency to oligarchy
and the development of a separate leadership class from the led.

(See Michels R.
(1961) [1911]. Political Parties: A
Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, NY,
The Free Press).

Professional clergy is how this oligarchy is manifested in
the church, and most other religions, often called a priest, but not always. The
name is irrelevant, the concept is that a subset of people become essential to
the functioning of the organisation, and the organisation has made supporting
them its priority. This oligarchy is part of the institutionalism that hinders
the growth of the church and has assisted its decline. See the blog Institutionalism
and Church decline

Christian leaders are essential, and they can be more
effective when paid full-time. But their role was never to replace the people
of the church and become the sole ministers, a separate priestly class, rather it
was to encourage all the church to pursue ministry, especially witness and
evangelism.When times are lean,
paid leaders are a luxury the church cannot afford and the church needs to
learn to manage without them, as it does in many parts of the world where,
ironically, the church grows.

[3] In a subsequent blog I will demonstrate the hypothesis
that churches decline now compared with the past because of their failure to
recruit.

[4] See

Hayward J. (2002). A Dynamical Model of Church Growth and its
Application to Contemporary Revivals. Review
of Religious Research, 43(3),218-241.

[6] In a subsequent blog I will give examples to show that the church
growth of the past primarily came through revival.

[7] Lloyd-Jones D.M.(1986).
Revival. Marshall Pickering.

[8] Davies G.. Understanding Parish Growth Stages, Diocese
of Sydney.

[9] It may be argued that most small rural churches do not
have a lively spiritual fellowship at their core, but just people turning up on
Sunday, out of routine, demanding the services of a minister, and with no
interest of putting anything spiritual into the church themselves. But it is
this information that would needed to be known before any attempt at closing a
churches would need to be made. Size alone does not determine viability.

Saturday, 10 October 2015

Effective communication of the gospel is essential if those
who do not believe in Jesus are to come to faith. How shall they believe in Him of whom they
have not heard? Rom 10:14. However if the message is unintelligible then
they may not have heard enough clear information to believe. Clarity is vital. We
can all think of poor methods of gospel presentations that do not connect with
people or culture. But something happened this summer to make me think again.

Coming to the end of a long visit
to the USA, my wife and I had a spare day in Boston while waiting for a flight
home. It was a hot day, and after spending our time looking around the harbour
area, we ended up back in town, eating ice cream on seats outside a well-known
pharmacy, as it was in the shade.

Just next to us were some street
preachers, letting rip with a message of hellfire and repentance. In the space
of five minutes I heard words like atonement, justification, substitution, all
backed with quotes from the King James Version of the Bible, with many thees
and thous. They even mentioned George Whitefield and his visits to Boston in
the 1700s! In addition there were a number of placards, such as “Christ died
for our sins.”

I could not fault their doctrine,
and Whitefield is a hero of mine, but I wondered whether any of the people
walking past understood what was preached. It was hard enough for a believer to
follow, let alone non-believers, who I suspect were the majority around that
day. How shall they believe in Him of
whom they have not heard clearly? (I added the clearly!)

Not surprisingly most people
ignored them, and only the occasional person stopped and was brave enough to
receive a tract. No-one actually
stood and listened to the preacher. But then I spotted something a bit out of
the ordinary. Behind one of the placard holders was a lady with her own, much
smaller placard, which said, “Smile if you worship Satan.”

What was so interesting, and a bit amusing, was that this
lady was getting far more attention than either the preacher or the placard
holders. Every now and then someone would give her a big smile and she would
smile back and wave enthusiastically, ignored by the street preaching party.
She was clearly benefiting from her location behind the street preachers and
the contrast it gave. It did make me smile.

Smile agh! She caught me smiling. “Do you?” she mouthed at
me, assuming I was a worshipper of Satan. “No!” I mouthed back, shaking my head
furiously. Well that was it; I had to speak with her. I told her: “I can’t
agree with your message, but 10 out of 10 for communication.” She was having
far better results than the street preachers.

It turns out she was not a follower of Satan, but just
someone who disagreed with the way the street preachers were proclaiming the
gospel. “I have read about Jesus in the Bible” she said “and he did not do it
this way”. I sort of agreed, and said he told stories, parables, but assured
her Jesus was definitively worth reading about!

Afterwards, though, this got me thinking about which of the
two, street preachers or “Satan” lady, were the best communicators. Yes Jesus
did tell parables, but he didn’t tell them for the purposes of effective
communication, but so that those listening would not understand, and thus
confirm their hardness of heart! Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see,
and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. Mt 13:12. He quotes
this as a fulfilment of Isaiah 6: Hearing
you will hear and shall not understand…For the hearts of this people have grown dull.

Jesus knew that the problem with lack of
faith was not lack of understanding, but hardness of heart. It was not that
they did not know enough to believe, but that they did not want
to believe. Indeed the only people who were meant to understand the parables
were his disciples, and they were too slow-witted to understand him. We all
know that feeling!

The New Testament church did not appear to
use parables, however even they were not understood.Paul was called a babbler in Athens (Acts 17), probably
doing something very similar to the Boston street preachers. When he finally
got an audience all went well until he mentioned the resurrection. Now they
understood – so they walked off! The issue was not understanding, but hardness
of heart.

Indeed effective communication of the gospel
can be a dangerous business.Early
church leader, Stephen, had no trouble getting his audience to understand him,
but they killed him for it. The issue was not understanding, but hardness of
heart (Acts 6-7).

Perhaps the people walking past the street
preachers that day did so because they already knew enough that they had
decided to reject the gospel. It would have not made any difference how the
street preachers presented it; the people would have ignored them. Hardness of
heart, not understanding is the issue.

So what is the purpose of such street
preaching if people walk by, or walk off as soon as they understand you, or
kill you because they don’t like it? How can anyone believe through preaching?

I remember a story the late preacher, John
Wimber, told. When he was not a Christian he used to see a man walking with a
placard. One side said, “I’m a fool for Christ”; the other said, “whose fool
are you?”Wimber thought how
stupid the man was. But after his conversion he could remember the incident
well, and “Fool for Christ” became Wimber’s personal motto [1]. Though it
appeared the man in the billboard had communicated nothing sensible to Wimber,
it had played its part in his conversion. The issue was hardness of heart, not
understanding. But something sunk in that God used later.

Long before I was a Christian I used to
listen to music on Radio Luxemburg, mid 60s to early 70s. Sometimes it would
fade out, and briefly in would fade Trans World Radio, a Christian station [2].
It really annoyed me, and if Luxemburg did not come back fast I would switch
elsewhere. I never listened to more than a minute of something I had rejected
as unintelligible rubbish. I eventually stopped listening to Luxemburg, and the
Trans World Radio interruptions. Eight years later, when I got converted through
other means, I could remember the radio evangelist’s name, Dick Saunders, hymns,
main points and appeal! The issue was hardness of heart, not understanding. But
something sunk in that God used later.

Boston seen from
Cambridge MA.

So I wonder if street preaching may be more
effective than we realise, and even though ignored and rejected at the time,
God uses it to soften and open the hearts of those who will not embrace him.
Whether it is street drama or heavy-duty hellfire with King James English – God
uses it. Jesus had little fruit to show at the end of his ministry; most had
walked away, his teaching rejected, and his parables not understood. But he had
sowed the seeds that led to people’s future conversion.

So maybe the Boston street preachers, ignored
by the people of Boston that day, are far more effective than the “Satan” lady,
and more effective than their many critics would say. Sowing seeds ready for
when hard hearts are softened.

Having said that, the next time I hear an
atheist speaking, or a secular politician spouting forth with a godless
message, I think I will stand near holding a sign that says: “Smile if you love
Jesus!”

References

[1] John Wimber led the
Vineyard Church in its early years and had a huge influence in charismatic renewal and
evangelical Christianity. He told his conversion story in: The Dynamics of Spiritual Life, John
Wimber and Kevin Springer, 1990, page 118, Hodder & Stoughton.